


He did not wear his scarlet coat

by Yening



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - World War II, Angst, Idol Worship, M/M, Painting, sor of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24678001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yening/pseuds/Yening
Summary: "You shouln't be here," replied Grantaire with a grin. "You should go back to artworks."(Or, in which Grantaire drew a portrait.)
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	He did not wear his scarlet coat

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [他没穿他那件猩红上衣](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24679117) by [aaName](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaName/pseuds/aaName). 



Ⅰ.

“If you want a red rose,” said the tree, “you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart’s-blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins and become mine.” [1]

A drunkard sat away from noisy crowds. He was dressed in black, his clothes shabby and stained with paint. His hair was long. Black curls hung onto his collarbone and nape, and covered the pale forehead and the eyes. No one knew what color his eyes were.

Undoubtedly, he was a hopeless wretch. He didn’t talk nor laugh. You could see from the green bottle full of absinthe in his hand that except drinking, he was capable of nothing, because he had forgotten how to do them. Everybody derided him in a Joycean way. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on their girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets [2]. People shouted at him: Wake up, beggar! Wake up, you tippler! The pub is closing! A tide westering, moondrawn, in his wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within him, blood, oinopa ponton, an absinthe-dark sea [2].

And the drunkard rose to his feet obediently. The drunkard never attacked people, nor caused trouble, let alone making noises. Submissively, he staggered out of the pub. People roared with laughter behind him, but he didn't seem to hear it. Or maybe he really did not hear it, for he was very drunk.

It rained when he walked down the streets. He felt the cold rain gleaming in the night. He raised his head and tasted the raindrops with his tongue. Since he was quite drunk, this was certainly not easy. It was of great difficulty to maintain balance in such a state, so the raindrops fell on his cheeks and into his eyes instead, sprinkling like tiny needles. This felt weird—the raindrops seemed more freezing than snow. It was cold, so cold that he was chilled to the marrow. Maybe it’d snow tomorrow, or maybe it’d be too cold to snow. Things of this kind could never be predicted, so the drunkard gave up thinking about them.

Yet his head hurt again. It was a dull pain. He felt sick again, as if someone was pulling his stomach down. Then he surrendered to this pulling force, and stooping, he vomited in a corner of the wall. It was all dark. He didn’t know what he had vomited.

The poor wretch, people said, and wondered what on earth had become of him. The marks of ill-treatment could be seen on his face. These were not just some facial scars, but something deeper and more mysterious—a gray imprint, something stood for destruction. It could the result of imprisonment, or concentration camps; in short, it was the result of secret police.

Did he commit a felony, or was it just a misdemeanor? Then a whisper came from the crowd: this drunkard is said to have come from **Free France** ; probably from a concentration camp! Hearing this, people all stopped talking and looked up into the black sky, which now seemed to be a great round black eye. Under its gaze, no one dared to say anything.

But wherever he came from, the drunkard knew nothing of these whispers. He waddled around a corner, and was out of the sight of the gossips.

He lived in a small cubicle right next to the Café Musain. He climbed upstairs, his hands shaking when he was fumbling in his pocket to for the keys. His vision was blurred, and it took him a while to find the keyhole and opened the door.

"My head hurts again," he said to an object in the room. "Please do not scold me, Apollo."

Of course the object wouldn’t answer him, but he grinned as if he heard its response. He smiled childishly.

"Don’t trouble yourself to quiet me, Enjolras. I want to drink, and I say we should toast. The world is meaningless; it’s like two big pots made of lead buckled together. The upper half of it is the ice and the lower half rests on the fire. Enjolras, people are going to be burnt to ashes, and the sky is covered with black snow. The ashes fall back into hell, into the bowels of Leviathan, of Nidhogg, of Heinrich Himmler. Ashes to ashes. I really hope that there was an end to all this, but the world is no longer the world we knew. The world has become a quality cooker, and you can use the upper half to ice oysters and the lower half to grill the steaks. What a great feast! And then I’m sad again; yes, all is but a farce!”

He sat down unsteadily, making a thumping noise due to being off-balance. He looked around again with a blank look. Obviously, besides himself, there were brushes and oil paints on the floor. White and red paint was splashed like an irregular constellation on the wooden floor. The drunk grabbed a paintbrush.

"I—I met Courf. Courf still wanted me at the assembly, but I didn't go. He’d find here sooner or later. After all, he is always good at tracking." He looked up at the object and said, "Enjolras, forgive me. I can't—"

The object didn’t speak. He stared at it blankly, sniffing his nose and shaking his head, as if he had received a response again. His bloodshot eyes fogged up. The mist in his eyes had more alcohol than salt. His eyes were as red as those people’s, who had wept or were chronically ill.

"It’s time for change of air, from the crematorium to the fiery pit of hell. From this point of view, I can’t say which necessitates more power. Energy is precious. If energy runs out, we can even use the lower race as energy. The world becomes increasingly disordered. I agree with Ferrer that it is moving towards greater chaos. The wheels of Germany tanks are rolling forward! Goebbels is a raptor, and so is Beria. They are just like Hydra—one is cut off before another will be born. It’s endless. And I, I don’t buy their shit. Look, Courf told me that Ferrer had intercepted the Allies on the radio again. Their news is: everything is nonsense, and this is where the world is going to end. Except this, there is no truth now. But no matter what will happen, the universe is void, with thousands of green stars and blood-red moons, all dancing fandango! Now an idea about a new painting occurs to me: green flowers blooming on the bright of red bullet holes. How romantic! How wild the color will be! Just like the way Matisse used colors, just like Miró did. Boom-Boom! This picture must be unprecedented. **Red carnival. Red Harlequin. The Harlequin's Harmony.** One day human beings will fight on stars, and then dynamite will be a universal currency—do not forget this."

The drunkard looked up at the object, and the object looked back at him. For him, it was no longer an object, but a pale young man. The object was a sketch that had just been completed. The brushstrokes and lines were simple but precise, from which emerged the pale face of a young man, who was angelically handsome like a maiden. The young man, with curly long hair and a high forehead, had a straight but slender nose. His face was solemn but gentle, and he looked like a Greek deity of perfection. His marble-like skin reflected moonlit whiteness in the hazy, Klimt-styled gray shadows.

The drunkard looked up at the portrait and reached out his hand skillfully to his side. He felt a bottle on the floor, took it, and raised his head to down the absinthe. Paler, he picked up the paintbrush.

"There’ll be an end soon," he said, looking at the young man in the portrait very gently.

He reached out and grabbed a brush from his side. He tapped the brush in the paint tray, and applied the color to the young man’s body skin. Working under the pale light, he painted the young man’s cheeks rosy gradually, and gave dawning gold and light pink to the outline of the face. The young man on the portrait was bathed in such a hue, his eyes lowering. He shone like a sun with faint lights, his face slowly taking on a new look. There was pensiveness in his slightly lowered eyes, as if he were looking quietly back at the drunkard.

This was not, at any rate, what the drunkard previously had in mind. He raised his red, drunken eyes to meet the young man’s eyes. He shuddered.

“Enjolras?”

Ⅱ.

She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the topmost spray of the rose tree there blossomed a marvelous rose, petal following petal, as song followed song. Pale was it, at first, as the mist that hangs over the river—pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of the tree [1].

The drunkard roamed the streets in the early morning.

He wore a gray coat without hat, the ends of his untidy curls covered with frosty-white crumbs. He somehow staggered down the streets.

It was a nice day. The sky was blue, and the sun shone through the silvery, silken clouds, casting its light on the drunkard. With open mouth he drank the sun, as though it had been wine [3] _._ In fact, the drunkard’s attitude towards life was rather striking, given that at this time people were living in a dark cave and some animate, intangible, and tar-like substance had blackened the world and even dimmed the light [4]. This made it morally horrible to even just sneak a look at such an immoderate drunkard. It seemed that the drunkard were not just standing there, but stooping and bearing an invisible Cross of Lorraine. He seemed to wear a crown made up of barbed wire, and tread heavily, imprinting bloody footprints on the ground. His footprints were like the red balloons in Paul Klee’s paintings, drifting into the hell which was red and burnt with dark-yellow fever.

Poor wretch, passers-by shook their heads. In broad daylight, no one had ever seen a drunkard in the street. When the drunkard entered a pub, someone said, “Hey, you tippler, thought you’d come only at night!” The drunkard slowly raised his head. Half of his listless and pale face was hidden in the messy hair. His lips turned blue. “It’s nothing, Sir,” his voice was almost destroyed by the alcohol, and every single word he pronounced was only linked together by breath—like broken limbs connected with the body by skin. “Sir!” the drunkard continued, “Nothing but that I lost my keys and couldn’t wake up my landlord. Just spent one night outside.”

But it's already winter! People were curious. Hadn’t you thought about the possibility of being frozen to death? Someone jerked him by the shoulder. Hey, you're shivering!

He blinked.

No I am not! Shivering, the drunkard said. I—here’s to the dignity of Jötunheimr! To the dignity of Thrymr and Vidkun Quisling! They are raptors! I’ll never be—a little snow does no harm to me!

He sounded serious, and everyone burst into laughter. No matter what happened, his speech was always cheerful.

The drunkard stopped talking, and downed the cheap gin. The alcohol reddened and burnt his face. He kept drinking, until the pub was to close. Time to go, you tippler! It was a custom to shout at the drunkard before the pub closed. The drunkard was not drinking at that time; he huddled up in the corner with his head against the wall and his eyes closed. This was exactly the gesture of those who were feeling cold.

Go away, you sot! You can’t stay here! Hearing this, the drunkard opened his eyes, got up obediently and wandered across the street as if he were sleepwalking. He clutched a half-empty bottle. He felt extremely sleepy and cold, and to his relief, he finally found the keys and managed to enter his house.

He looked up at the portrait in the middle of the room and frowned slowly.

"Laurel is the symbol of war, just as Frida Kahlo is the symbol of Paris. Helmut Knochen and Carl Oberg are bleeding Paris secretly. I can almost see their masks of birds, of raptors, of vultures. Their beaks are huge iron instruments of torture that feed on human beings…" He murmured, “Enjolras, I saw, I saw them hunt people. I hid in a place discovered by Éponine and Gavroche, and it was safe at night—"

He picked up his brush and palette.

"The sun is still shining on a door today. Inside that door, there was a family yesterday, but today there is nothing. Enjolras. The secret police were polite. The steps were clean and bloodless— **they** too feared stains! I watched everyone walk out of the house. Then **they** searched that house again. There was no human sound. All I heard was radio and glasses falling to the floor and smashing to pieces. It was really noisy. Everything was upside down—humans were as quiet as objects, while objects screamed like humans," he trembled. The young man in the portrait held a roll of flag which was painted bright red by him. It radiated glow just as flames in the dark night did. Gradually, the glow became a red cascade, the water of which surged and roared, as a rose slowly bloomed and expanded its petals. Standing against a radiating blossom, the young man was like a pale pearl in the center of the flower. “There was nothing... Of course, there is nothing. The sun shines on the Louvre, on Assemblée nationale, on the Senate, but there is nothing. Zero, not wanting to go around entirely naked, has clothed himself in vanity. **Vae victis** (woe to the vanquished)!

He stared blankly at the portrait.

"That’s how Bossuet and Joly were taken..."

He quivered, but continued to encircle the young man with the waves of the flag. Against the light of scarlet flames, the young man’s expression became clear, his uncolored lips tightened, adding inexpressible sadness to his delicate face.

Under such a look, the drunkard looked away.

"Bossuet and Joly..." His voice faltered. “Enjolras, they won’t come back."

He moved his brush upward, and a blood-red light spread behind the young man. He hunched under such glare, and reached for his drink again. By this time, he was not feeling well. Through the haze of drunkenness he felt like a razor was scraping inside his throat, and he felt a deep, dark pain in his abdomen. But he kept drinking until he was unconscious. Then he slept on the floor.

In his dream, vague images flashed by. He dreamed of his cobweb-like veins being attached to his palette, and red drops dropping onto the palette. He then dreamed that he dipped his brush on these drops, and drew something on the young man's chest. It was dark-red shadows in the shape of rose buds. He decorated the central petals with ruby luster. These rose buds blossomed all over the young man.

Is that the heart? He wondered in dream. Blood was now pumping from these buds and flowing all over the portrait, forming delicate and silken veins that became a slender and flowery rose-tree. Filled with blood, the young man in the portrait came alive. He said something to the drunkard, but the drunkard couldn’t read the young man’s lips due to the darkness. Then, at last, his consciousness stilled.

Ⅲ.

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and louder and louder grew her song, for she sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a maid.

And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose, like the flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride. But the thorn had not yet reached her heart, so the rose's heart remained white, for only a Nightingale's heart's-blood can crimson the heart of a rose [1].

Ghosts danced the sarabande around the drunkard. These phantoms, as gray and transparent as shadows cast by the moon, circled hand in hand. They looked like an illusory flowers-woven wreath.

The drunkard, hands stained with paint, looked up at the portrait.

"Death is nothing but a scientific fact," the drunkard croaked, putting a bottle into his mouth. He swallowed so quickly that he coughed violently, pouring more liquor on himself. He quavered with the cough till his chest ached. He was really drunk. The ruddiness of his face had faded completely, and he was paler than before. Yet, he was not going to stop drawing. He added golden paint onto the portrait. The young man’s hair, loosely curling like petals of daffodil and shining like golden silk, fell gently on the both sides of his cheek.

“Enjolras and the Rococo style are compatible, but Enjolras must think it rotten.” The drunkard kept muttering. “This is rather disturbing, Apollo. People are waving imaginary weapons, slaughtering imaginary enemies, and wearing imaginary laurels. Everyone is Caesar. Everyone is Brutus. Everyone is Buonaparte. Everyone is Wellington. It’ll never dawn again. I can see from the window that the moon is a green tumor taking the shape of a skeleton, and that the streets are covered with red flags and black blood—the real Red and Black! I can see that the monsters coming out at night make faces at people’s beds, and that the sky is an impenetrable net, from which float down bright, bloody snowflakes. Just yesterday, they fell on my face. I can also see that it has become a national action to slaughter heroes, and the executioners slaughter them with legitimacy. District 16 has become a graveyard. Every time I go there, I feel like the scenes in Edvard Munch’s paintings has come true. The executioners, they feed upon us."

He mixed lake blue, sky-blue and a little cobalt blue in palette, applying them to the edge of the young man’s iris, like a scattering of tiny blue petals.

"Apollo, god of heaven. No ugliness is allowed to approach him. His beauty alone inspires awe, and also the magic word—freedom! Enjolras is an angel of his own kind... Marble statue. Deity needs no pain. Such is Enjolras... Oh my head hurts again and I won’t think about these anymore.”

The drunkard murmured slowly as he painted, adding a golden halo around the pupil, as if the young man’s eyes reflected the sun. The eyes shone brilliantly like sapphires, into which the slender golden eyelashes casted shadows. It looked like a blue lake shimmering in the sunshine.

The drunkard blinked at these eyes. Something supernatural seemed to happen to the portrait. The drunkard felt that the young man, raising the eyes slowly, looked deeply into his. A shudder ran through him. He had always been familiar with such gaze. Taking a step forward in an almost sleepwalking manner, he met the young man’s gaze.

“Enjolras…”

He murmured.

His pale and bleeding heart! The drunkard grinned at the portrait.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle, life's but a walking shadow.” [5]

He sighed as he muttered, holding the paintbrush as if it were a thorn, and stabbed the brush into his own chest.

Ⅳ.

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and the thorn touched her heart, and a fierce pang of pain shot through her. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.

And the marvelous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart [1].

The drunkard vomited as he walked, his face white and his eyes bloodshot. Pain was a rare thing to him, for pain seemed remote and dull. This was probably the effect of alcohol. He felt his eyes fogged up, too. He walked slowly across a stone street, legs leaden and knees weak. To gain balance, he leaned against the wall with one hand, and moved slowly forward, gritting his teeth.

It was snowing. But he didn’t have the strength to raise his head to watch the snowflakes. He walked past the stone street slowly, feeling that the mighty gray buildings all pressed at him. Their gray shadows on him were like that in _Guernica_ , like monsters opening their mouth to swallow him down. The invisible black gear inside the shadows was in operation with a squeak. Such illusions triggered his memories of the past. He shivered more severely, and stooped down despite himself. He felt that there were hard stones in his stomach. As he walked, the stones collided with each other and scraped his guts, squeezing all kinds of juices out of his guts.

He vomited up the last spirits he had just drunk. Then, nothing left in intestine, he vomited gastric juices, and bile, and finally blood. He saw blood-red claws, which appeared in cubists’ paintings, cut through his chest and belly, their silhouettes as sharp as prisms. He did not have the strength to fight back. He climbed, step by step, to the second floor of Musain, and opened the door.

It was evident that a considerable change had taken place to the portrait. The young man on the canvas was almost animate now, whose body was made up from marble and gold. Ruby roses blossomed on his chest, and he seemed like standing under a flowery rose tree. In the young man's features, there was an air of chastity; it was not earthly but celestial. Looking at such a face, one would feel awestruck despite oneself. Such a portrait was rare, and was utterly out of place in this dingy, shabby little cubicle. The young man’s blue eyes were sparkling with flames, and around the pupils were pale lights, which made his eyes fluorescent quicksand that dragged one down to the bottom of the sea. He looked deeply into the drunkard who was mesmerized. The drunkard’s will had sunk into the dark whirlpool of alcohol, but via this portrait, he grasped the last glimmer of light. He blinked at the portrait.

"Enjolras," he said, "I’m so close to finishing... Just the last bit..."

Hands frozen, he clenched the paintbrush tightly. The brush seemed a thorn, which drew the last drops of his blood to its ends and dropped them onto the palette. The drunkard, whose eyes had lost focus, tried his best to concentrate on the portrait and touched the roses that surrounded the young man with his brush.

There were eight roses. His brush ran all the way down the petals, and drew streams of blood dripping down from the stamen. With these bloodstains, the roses seemed drenched in blood. He then drew crimson petals at the feet of the young man. Such a scene reminded one of gun wounds. He was always good at metaphor.

Smiling gently at the portrait, he slowly leaned forward, closed his eyes, and kissed the young man. His lips were still stained with blood, which then stained the young man’s lips.

"Enjolras," he blinked, with dilated pupils. Cold sweat oozed from his forehead. "You shouldn’t have been here... I’d told you a long time ago. Without your resistance, the British would still win or would still lose. Your resistance wouldn’t change anything. It was meaningless. Enjolras, why did you meet those workers? I’d told you some of them were traitors. I had noticed them when I was at the Barrière du Maine..."

He looked at the portrait, and it, for some mysterious reason, looked back at him.

"I only noticed the man who aimed at you," he said. "Then all I thought was to cover you. I should have realized that they had reinforcements," he continued with an exhausted voice. "It was all my fault…"

He stared at the portrait. The supernatural power that happened to this portrait had become so strong that he could see a teardrop trickling down the young man’s marble cheeks. Too shocked by this teardrop to tear his eyes away, he smiled gently at the young man.

“Will you permit it?”

He said to Enjolras.

Ⅴ.

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.

“Look, look!” cried the tree, “the rose is finished now;” but the Nightingale made no answer, for she was lying dead in the long grass, with the thorn in her heart [1].

A ginger-haired young man came. He knocked on the door impatiently.

"I come to see your tenant—my name is Courfeyrac," he said. "I have checked several places... Grantaire lives here, doesn’t he?"

The landlord surveyed this strange man.

"Yeah he does," he answered. "I beg your pardon, Sir, but your friend is a strange man. Even at this period you shouldn’t live your life like he does—”

But the ginger-haired man had already passed the landlord. He rushed to the second floor, where he knocked at the door fiercely.

“R! R, are you here?”

No one answered the door. The landlord went upstairs, and looking at the young guy, he took the spare key from his pocket.

“Two days since I last saw him,” the landlord asked. “He used to hang out and buy spirits almost every day. Is he ill? ”

Courfeyrac slammed the door open.

It was unexpected that there was an excellent portrait in such a small room. A young man in red held high a red flag. The flag, surrounding the young man, was like blood-red roses which cast fiery shadows on him. This twenty-year-old young man looked delicate. His limbs shone with silvery light, and shared the slenderness of Greek sculptures, but were more delicate than them. He had a high forehead and a high-bridged nose. His bright eyes were pensive, and they were sapphires which reminded people of a blue sun rising from a gilded sea. His blonde hair was silken and shone like sunlight. These golden waves rolled over his shoulders, and curled around his maiden-like cheeks.

His body had become a lush rose tree whose branches were human veins. Eight ruby roses blossomed on his chest and then all over him. Red streams flowed out of the roses, just like blood flowed out of wounds. The red was so bright and vivid, and sent shivers down the spine of anyone who saw it. The scene was so moving and horrible that the landlord, lost in a great shock, was speechless.

But there was something else—a pearly teardrop flowed down the young man’s cheek. He lowered his eyes lightly, and seemed to be in great sorrow, which rendered him all the more solemn and serene. But Courfeyrac was trembling all over. Following the portrait’s gaze, there lay a man, and Courfeyrac knelt down on the ground. The man curled up, with one hand reaching out in the direction of that portrait.

“R!” Courfeyrac screamed, “No. No, No—”

He turned to the landlord. He looked so desperate that it pained to look directly back at him. The landlord dropped his gaze.

“Please, we need a doctor!”

He whimpered like a child.

But the landlord, just like all Parisians, was experienced in distinguishing between the living and the dead.

“I am sorry,” he said.

The landlord knelt down beside the deceased and closed his eyes. For the first time, the landlord was aware of the color of his eyes. Dark green, like frosted glass.

"You may take this portrait with you," said the landlord. "I didn’t know he was a painter." He looked up at the portrait. “Breathtakingly beautiful! By no means should this be found by Germans…"

Epilogue.

“I am Enjolras.”

Said Apollo with blonde hair, frowning at Grantaire.

For Grantaire, everything begun with this scene: Enjolras' hair was then tied as a ponytail, a string of golden curls trailing behind his head like flowers. Enjolras, who was then wrestling with a radio, was responsible for the transmission of codes and the design of codes for Free French Forces in the suburbs. Enjolras had a small room where radios, printers, and transmitting antennas were hoarded. He was surrounded by them, like a Delacroix’s figure cut out of a Romantic picture and pasted in an unnatural way in a picture of a dimly-lit basement of the twentieth century.

The radios and the transmitters yellowed with oxidization, and Enjolras stood in the center, glittering with golden light—judging from aesthetic perspective, this scene was stylistically contradictory. Grantaire didn’t know how to deal with his uneasiness which lasted from then till the end of his days.

"You shouldn't be here," said Grantaire honestly. "You should be—"

Enjolras fixed his eyes sternly on Grantaire, who let out a loud growl as his bit his own tongue.

"I should be here," Enjolras said. "The Forces need internal support in Paris, and the guerrillas also need technical assistance. I take these as my duty. This is something serious, and you must not trifle with it, let alone laugh at it. If you feel the job Courfeyrac assigned for you is too perilous, you can just talk with me. By no means will we force people to stay. Anyone can leave."

"You should go back to artworks," replied Grantaire with a grin. "Charles-André van Loo is too pedantic for you. Jacques-Louis David supports Buonaparte. The first one bores me to death and the latter turns me off. I propose that you should return to _Liberty Leading the People_. Wait a moment and I'll steal it for you. I am skilled at this."

Enjolras' eyes, which were astonishingly blue, were still fixed on Grantaire, and in those eyes there was puzzled surprise. Such gaze made Grantaire suddenly feel like crying. He thrust his hands into the pockets, and looked up at Enjolras, grinning.

"Please don't stand in the way of our job," Enjolras demanded. “This is the place for intoxication, not drunkenness. If you won’t be serious, then go to somewhere else.”

“I am not leaving without you,” Grantaire said. “I will do whatever you ask me to do.”

Enjolras frowned at this eccentric.

“I’ll follow you,” Grantaire grinned. “You’ll see.”

In Reading gaol by Reading town

There is a pit of shame,

And in it lies a wretched man

Eaten by teeth of flame,

In a burning winding-sheet he lies,

And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,

In silence let him lie:

No need to waste the foolish tear. [3]

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> The Author‘s Notes:  
> [1] was taken from "The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde  
> [2] was taken from _Ulysses_ by James Joyce  
> [3] and the title were taken from "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" by Oscar Wilde  
> [4] was taken from "Paris Under the Occupation" by Jean-Paul Sartre  
> [5] was taken from _Macbeth_ by William Shakespeare
> 
> The Translator’s Notes:  
> Awkward expressions are the results of my not being a native English speaker ~~and of my not being a good editor who blames language mistakes on not being native~~. I'm really sorry for anything that sounds weird or is just wrong.  
> This story reminded me firstly of “The Nightingale and the Rose” and then of an Austrian musical called _Mozart!_. The protagonists gave their all, including life, to complete works. I really love stories of this kind and thought that maybe I could have a go at translating it. Anyway, thank you so much for reading. Hope you enjoyed this. ♥


End file.
